Chương 6
He had returned with his attorney and was waiting downstairs.
Julian sat in a family consultation room with Beatrice and Samuel Dorsey while detectives decided what they could legally examine. A landscape print hung crooked above a plastic table. Beatrice noticed it and reached as though to straighten the frame, then stopped herself.
“Why did Clara call you?” Julian asked.
Dorsey sighed. “I recommend—”
“I am not asking about the phone. I am asking why she called Beatrice instead of me.”
Beatrice looked at her hands. “Because you would have called the police.”
“I did call the police.”
“Exactly.”
“She was being abused.”
“She was also frightened that the trust would collapse.”
“Did she say that?”
“No.”
“Then you were frightened.”
Beatrice rubbed her thumb over the pale indentation where her wedding ring had once sat. She had stopped wearing it a year after Julian’s father died, though she never explained why.
“Clara believed you would confront Elliot immediately,” she said. “She believed he would release the treatment videos.”
“What videos?”
“Recordings from six years ago. She was unwell. She said terrible things. Your father had someone record family meetings because he thought Clara was manipulating doctors.”
Julian sat back.
He remembered one meeting in the estate library. Clara had been twenty-two, shaking beneath a wool blanket, begging their father not to send her back to treatment. Julian had stood near the windows and said nothing because he had believed the adults knew what recovery required.
There had been a small black camera on a shelf.
He had forgotten it.
“Elliot has those recordings?”
“Your father gave him access to the family archives when Elliot began managing the trust.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because your father admired men who knew how to use shame.”
The answer came without hesitation.
Julian studied Beatrice’s face.
“You hated him,” he said.
“I married him.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Beatrice gave a faint shrug. “In our family, those answers often matched.”
Dorsey looked at his watch but did not interrupt again.
Beatrice continued. “Clara came to the estate because Elliot struck her after she confronted him about the consulting accounts. She wanted me to help secure the records before morning. Then she said she was going directly to the attorney general’s office.”
“And you stopped her.”
“She was barely standing.”
“You could have taken her to a hospital.”
“She begged me not to.”
“Before or after you called Dr. Wren?”
“Before.”
“Did she ask to be sedated?”
Beatrice looked away.
Julian nodded slowly. “There it is.”
“I made the wrong decision.”
“You made several.”
“Yes.”
The word was so quiet that it interrupted his anger.
Beatrice picked at a loose thread on her cuff. “When Clara grabbed my handbag, she was looking for the car keys. I pulled it back. The bracelet broke. She fell against the table. She stood up and slapped me.”
Julian had not heard that part.
Beatrice touched her left cheek, though no mark remained. “I told Marcus to block the door. Clara screamed that I was no better than her father. Eliza arrived and said she might be experiencing a drug reaction. Clara had taken pills from Elliot’s bathroom before leaving.”
“Did she say what they were?”
“Alprazolam, she thought. She wanted to calm down enough to drive.”
“So she asked for keys while impaired.”
“Yes.”
“That still doesn’t justify holding her without medical help.”
“No.”
“Why didn’t you call an ambulance after she hit her head?”
Beatrice’s mouth tightened.
“Because an ambulance creates a record,” Julian said.
She looked at him.
“And a record creates questions,” he continued. “Questions create reporters. Reporters call trustees. Trustees look at contracts you approved.”
Dorsey said, “Julian.”
He ignored him.
Beatrice’s eyes remained dry. “I told myself we needed one night.”
“One night for what?”
“To control the damage.”
“Whose damage?”
She had no answer.
Clara remained hospitalized for three days.
On the second afternoon, she agreed to speak with Detective Ortiz without Elliot, Beatrice, or Julian present. The interview lasted forty minutes. Afterward, Clara vomited into a plastic basin and slept for five hours.
Julian spent most of that day in the cafeteria, drinking coffee he disliked and pretending to review structural drawings on his laptop. Mae sent him comments about the Copenhagen museum. A junior architect had solved the cantilever problem by changing the internal truss spacing, a solution Julian had rejected two months earlier because it altered the ceiling rhythm.
He stared at the revised model.
It worked.
He approved it without comment, then sent the junior architect a separate message.
You were right. I should have listened sooner.
The reply came three minutes later.
Are you feeling okay?
Julian closed the laptop.
Marcus joined him near dusk. He had removed his earpiece and gold badge. Without them, he appeared older.
“I resigned,” Marcus said.
Julian looked at the empty chair across from him. “Sit.”
Marcus sat.
“Beatrice accepted?”
“She said resignations were premature before counsel reviewed liability.”
“That sounds like her.”
“I left the badge on her desk.”
Julian glanced at Marcus’s lapel. A small pair of holes remained in the fabric.
“What did you tell the detective?”
“Everything I remember.”
“Did you tell her the cameras were disabled?”
“Yes.”
“Are the recordings gone?”
“The main system stopped storing footage at one-forty. But the gate intercom has a separate cloud account.”
Julian looked up.
Marcus placed his phone on the table. “I checked the administrative log. Mrs. Ward arrived at one-fifty-eight. The camera captured her getting out of the rideshare.”
“Can I see it?”
“The detective has the file.”
“Did it show her injuries?”
“Not clearly. It showed her alone.”
“That contradicts Elliot if he says she never left home.”
“He says she left after attacking him.”
“How do you know?”
“His attorney made a statement downstairs.”
Julian leaned back. “Of course he did.”
Marcus folded his hands. “There is more.”
Julian waited.
May you like
“At two-twenty-six, Elliot’s car stopped outside the east gate.”
“He came to the estate?”
